After a five-day trip to Iraq, US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz conceded on July 23 that some key assumptions underlying the US occupation of Iraq were wrong.

In Wolfowitz's words, three assumptions of the US defence officials in the post-war planning "turned out to underestimate the problem." The errors included the belief that removing Saddam Hussein would also remove the threat posed by his Ba'ath Party; exaggerating the significant numbers of Iraqi army units and assuming that large numbers of Iraqi police would quickly join the US military and civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq.

The US officials were confident of the help Iraqi soldiers and police officers would offer to secure the country. They thought that Iraqis would embrace the Americans and a future marked by representative government, civil liberties and a free-market economy.

The comment of US officials as to the threat former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed to the United States and the world at large, are still fresh in many minds.

The United States issued an ultimatum to Saddam in February, giving him 48 hours to step down to avoid a war.

The previous autumn, the Bush administration had issued repeated public warnings concerning the threat that Saddam might supply chemical or biological weapons to terrorists.

"Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," US President George W. Bush said in Cincinnati on October 7.

"Alliances with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints," he warned.

As the United States and British intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has been found seriously wanting, their case for war against Iraq has fallen apart.

Wolfowitz's words were the Bush administration's first acknowledgement of the "mistakes" it has made in its handling of Iraq.

However, it remains silent on one rather more important question: Where are the Iraqi WMD its intelligence was so sure of?

On July 21 Wolfowitz relegated the tracing of such weapons, a threat that the United States and Britain cited as their main justification for going to war, a secondary issue.

He said he is not "concerned" about WMD, but in "getting Iraq on its feet."

The ousting of Saddam Hussein had long been a goal of the United States. With his two sons Uday and Qusay dead, Saddam's whereabouts top its list of priorities.

The release to the press of pictures of Uday and Qusay bodies were designed to sap the will of resistance groups fighting against US troops.

Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, US Vice-President Dick Cheney argued that failing to confront Saddam would have been "irresponsible in the extreme" and could have endangered the United States.

So far, the United States has failed to present convincing evidence on this argument.

(China Daily  July 28, 2003)